Nondisclosure by Geoffrey M. Cooper

Author:Geoffrey M. Cooper [Cooper, Geoffrey M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Medical Thriller
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

15

The dean called me into her office early the next morning. “You look like hell,” she said.

So I guess a sleepless night showed. “Thanks. You do too,” I replied.

She smiled grimly. “Yeah, it was a tough night. I guess for both of us. Do you want some coffee?”

She got up, and I followed her to a small kitchenette in the outer office, surprised that she was getting our coffees herself. Then it dawned on me. “No administrative assistant this morning?” I asked.

“I fired Dede earlier, after Karen and a Boston detective told me what happened.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. I should have done it a long time ago. I knew she talked too much and let things leak out sometimes. But gossiping about this was too much.”

She poured two mugs of coffee and added milk to hers. “Do you take anything in it?”

“No, just black.” She handed me the mug, and I followed her back into her office.

“Do you know who Dede talked to?” I asked. “Was it just Kristy?”

She sighed and shook her head. “She swore she only talked to Kristy at first. But then the Boston cop leaned on her. Said it was a murder investigation, and she could be arrested for lying to the police. So all of a sudden, she remembered that she might have mentioned it to four or five other people. Like she was a damned broadcasting network!”

I rolled my eyes. “And who knows how many people each of them told, and so forth. So the bottom line is that a whole bunch of people knew that Emily’s memory was coming back.”

“The detective said they’d interview the people Dede told and start building up a list. But does it really matter? He told me that Upton heard it from Emily herself.” She looked at me with a quizzical expression. “Don’t tell me you still think it isn’t him?”

The truth was that I found it even harder to imagine Upton as a murderer than as simply being guilty of a drunken sexual assault. And whatever Emily had told him about remembering that night, she obviously hadn’t thought he was the guilty party. So why would he have been driven to kill her?

But I kept my answer neutral. No sense in provoking the dean’s fury again. “I don’t know anymore. I have to admit everything points to him, except my gut and the way Emily trusted him. Hopefully the investigation will turn up some solid evidence, and we’ll be done speculating.”

She steepled her hands in front of her. “I hope so. The cops apparently don’t have enough to charge him at this point. And my hands are tied while he’s under investigation, although the lawyers advised me to put him on paid leave and order him to stay away from campus. Which I did earlier this morning.”

“Okay, that makes sense. I’ll assign a couple of faculty members to serve as temporary advisors for his students.”

“Good,” she said. “And we also have some heavy pastoral work to do for the rest of your department.

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